As many of you know, we had hoped to deliver a beautiful, new Noroton Heights shopping and living experience to the surrounding community by the end of this summer, 2021. Unfortunately, in March of 2020, in the course of the pandemic and its very unpredictable and severe impact on the business climate, our initial construction lender breached its loan agreement with us and walked away from its lending commitment to the project. This action was catastrophic to our project and left us in a deeply precarious situation that compelled us to focus all our efforts into stabilizing our financial situation while also determining how best to get the project financed again in a very inhospitable lending environment. We are now also vigorously pursuing litigation against the lender in federal court to seek redress for this wrongful breach and to recoup our considerable losses.
We share our community’s frustration and disappointment with the unfortunate appearance of our property at present and we are eager to get the project back on track and completed. Please know that we have been working diligently to reposition the project to serve the community’s needs in a way that will also be acceptable to a new construction lender so that we can resume construction as soon as possible.
We were able to find a local partner to assist us in carrying the project forward who shares our vision of “place making” with a development that complements the Noroton Heights neighborhood in a meaningful way –enhancing its attraction as a wonderful place to live, socialize and shop. This has always been our goal from day one. We hope to be able share more about this partnership in the coming months. At this juncture our primary goal is to get the project restarted and, to that end, we have modified the development plan and have filed an application with the Darien Planning and Zoning Commission for approval.
This has undoubtedly been the greatest challenge our family has faced in our 100 years in business serving our community. We want to thank everyone who has offered their kind words of support, and we especially thank everyone in the community for their patience as we work to get the project back on track.
Yours Truly,
Gregory Palmer
James Palmer & the entire Noroton Heights development team
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